Field
This disclosure is generally related to distribution of digital content. More specifically, this disclosure is related to a system for facilitating secure communication between entities in a content centric network based on a key exchange protocol.
Related Art
The proliferation of the Internet and e-commerce continues to create a vast amount of digital content. Content centric network (CCN) architectures have been designed to facilitate accessing and processing such digital content. A CCN includes entities, or nodes, such as network clients, forwarders (e.g., routers), and content producers, which communicate with each other by sending interest packets for various content items and receiving content-object packets in return. CCN interests and content objects are identified by their unique names, which are typically hierarchically structured variable length identifiers (HSVLI). An HSVLI can include contiguous name components ordered from a most general level to a most specific level.
In an IP-based communication such as TCP and UDP, two communicating entities can establish a secure session and verify subsequent messages based on their individual respective IP addresses. In contrast, communication in a CCN is not based on IP addresses. Instead, a CCN data packet (such as an interest or content object) is routed based on the name for the packet. Thus, entities communicating within a CCN cannot rely on IP addresses to securely establish an ephemeral session and exchange data within the session.